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Rumble in the jungle

He was the hottest young director in Hollywood - before he'd even made a film. But Orson Welles' first movie, an adaptation of Heart of Darkness, collapsed even before the cameras rolled. Clinton Heylin on the story behind the greatest film never made

Orson Welles settled upon Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as the raw material for his first film, believing it to be, as he later introduced it on the radio, "a downright incantation, [in which] we are almost persuaded that there is something essential waiting for all of us in the dark areas of the world." He seemed to be taking precious little notice of the clause that RKO studio boss George Schaefer had inserted into his contract, which stated that, though he had free rein on subject matter, his first film could not be "political or controversial". Welles already envisaged Heart of Darkness as an antifascist allegory, in which the looming threat to world peace from Europe's rightwing dictators was personified in the character of Kurtz. Also implicit would be the case for America's intervention and against international isolation, reflected in the actions of the film's narrator, Marlow.

I somehow doubt that Welles highlighted these elements in his personal "pitch" to Schaefer. As long as he required Schaefer's approval to proceed, he preferred to keep the themes of the film vague, though he informed his own publicist, Herb Drake, that "the picture is, frankly, an attack on the Nazi system". RKO received no such guidance, even if a September 15 1939 memo, ostensibly from Welles's mouthpiece, Drake, admitted that the film was "definitely not love in the tropics".

During the early stages of the Heart of Darkness project, Welles was careful to tone down any overt didacticism. His September 15 memo, if anything, reads like an extended send-up of the typical Hollywood thriller, rather than what it really was: an exercise in revealing as little as possible about the real themes its director intended to address. The memo may even have played a small part in starting the myth that Welles never had a firm handle on this film, nor a clear idea of how it might get made.

Welles had another problem - one entirely of his own making. He had hit upon a wholly original way of shooting Heart of Darkness that would be in the spirit of Conrad and also announce him to Hollywood. He just wasn't sure it would work, and if it did, how much effort it might entail. That September 15 memo alluded to the story being "told in an entirely new way", while admitting that the methodology was "in the experimental stage, so [Welles] doesn't wish to mention it until we can find a convenient formula to express its meaning".

Welles had decided to shoot the film as if the camera represented Marlow's line of vision - to make the first film in history that not only told its tale in first-person narrative but took the actual vantage of its narrator. Though he had yet to figure out how he might arrive at "a convenient formula", Welles knew it would not be easy - or cheap. Schaefer's reaction has not been recorded, but he must have been a worried man. However, until he saw an actual screenplay, he was unable to comment on the realities. Schaefer awaited the first draft with interest.

Welles had initially turned to his Mercury co-founder, John Houseman, for help with the script. Houseman recalls in his own book how "we wandered around the sound stages and talked about Heart of Darkness, which Orson had just announced - with considerable fanfare and without consulting me - as his first picture". Houseman, by his own admission, was "frightened by the necessities of an unfamiliar medium" and was "unable to give him anything at all", so Welles was ultimately required to find his way alone.

Conrad proved an equally circumspect partner in the process. Welles had developed something of a reputation in New York for disrespecting source material. New York Times theatre critic Brooks Atkinson had described his Macbeth as "a voodoo show inspired by the Macbeth legend"; while a Billboard report on the film prologue he intended to shoot for Too Much Johnson suggested that he had "succumbed again to his passion for chopping scripts to pieces".

Though Heart of Darkness had been Welles's chosen project since August, being specifically named in the final contract he signed with RKO, Schaefer had to wait until the second week in November for his first sight of a complete script. A 202-page script was delivered to RKO for mimeographing on November 7. Copies were immediately forwarded to Budgeting, the Hays office and Schaefer in New York.

Nine days later Schaefer sent a note to Welles that was hardly the effusive response he might have hoped for. Rather, Schaefer predicted "a very unusual picture", before querying the sheer number of voiceovers and questioning the wisdom of making such obvious political parallels. He was unhappy with a couple of clear allusions to Hitler at a time when America was still ostensibly neutral in what would be (for two years yet) an essentially European conflict. Kurtz's dying tirade includes a particularly pointed reference, courtesy of Welles. "There's a man now in Europe trying to do what I've done in the jungle. He will fail. In his madness he thinks he can't fail - but he will."

By now, though, all the relevant studio wheels were in motion and Welles was confident that sheer momentum would keep everything moving forward. On October 18, he had breathlessly cabled Herb Drake, Mercury's unit publicity director: "Had my first night with the movie cameras a few hours ago and I am wildly enthusiastic about the business, Orson."

These vitally important tests did not go so well. According to Amalia Kent, Welles's assistant assigned by RKO, "It was an enormously laborious and time-consuming process because of the elaborate camera movements and the intricate repositionings and measurements needed for the feather wipes." Welles had devised them as a way of making shots look continuous even when a number of cuts were used.

To what extent the budget department factored the feather wipes into their eventual costs has not been documented, but when they finally delivered an estimated cost for the movie, it was $1,057,761. Welles's contract allowed for a budget per film of $500,000. To put all of this in perspective, the budget for The Great McGinty was $400,000. On the other hand, RKO made two films in 1939 that cost nearly $2m. (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, at $1.82m, a great success; and Gunga Din, at $1.91m, an absolute catastrophe).

Welles was plunged into one of his great depressions, partially alleviated by a letter dated December 7 from RKO's Eddie Donahoe that detailed how an estimated budget of $910,740 for Swiss Family Robinson had been reduced to $596,000. Donahoe urged less despondency. "Whether we can take out that amount of money through a series of budget meetings and rewrite eliminations, is something we'll just have to go in and try, but it certainly isn't a hopeless task."

Welles was undoubtedly still hoping (and expecting) to salvage the film as he flew to New York to meet Schaefer on December 9, to iron out the way ahead. The deal he struck with Schaefer in New York was a typical Wellesian compromise: he would put Heart of Darkness on hold and would instead make a low-budget thriller for the studio, The Smiler with a Knife, for $400,000, with a view to resuming work on Conrad in the spring. Welcome to Hollywood, Mr Welles.

The Hollywood Reporter correctly predicted at the time that "Heart of Darkness won't ever be done." Where the gossip rags were proven wrong was in their prediction that "The current Welles confab with Schaefer may end the whole works." They knew that the date when he was supposed to deliver his first film (January 1 1940) was fast approaching, but Schaefer's faith in Welles's ability to deliver something startlingly original remained undimmed.

Welles himself, for better or worse, made no press pronouncement as to why the film remained stillborn, but simply kept moving ahead. Only many years later, in conversation with Barbara Leaming, did he suggest that it came down to the fundamental issue of control: "I wanted my kind of control. They didn't understand that. There was no quarrelling. It was just two different points of view, absolutely opposite each other. Mine was taken to be ignorance, and I read their position as established dumbheadedness."

Though the Hollywood press cruelly dubbed The Smiler with a Knife "Mr Welles's latest forthcoming picture," it was never conceived as anything but a stopgap. It was certainly never the movie with which he intended to make his Hollywood debut. Heart of Darkness might have to wait until he had proved himself, but prove himself he would.

· This is an edited extract from Despite the System: Orson Welles Vs the Hollywood Studios by Clinton Heylin (Canongate, £16.99)